


Subtext and Pheromones

by flootzavut



Series: Lie to NCIS [23]
Category: Lie to Me (TV), NCIS
Genre: Angst, Awesome Foursome, Cal being a shit, Crossover, CxK, F/M, Friendship, Humour, JxC, JxK, Kate Lives, Kibbs, Lie to NCIS, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and we never get anywhere BECAUSE THEY'RE BOTH DAFT AS DOORBELLS, foursomeverse, wee bit of Callian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 09:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7612462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flootzavut/pseuds/flootzavut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate's frustration is less easily kept in check of late, and one evening it boils over into some leading questions...</p>
<p>Crib notes for the fandom blind included!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subtext and Pheromones

**Author's Note:**

> Kate lives!AU. Post LTM canon, playing fast and loose with NCIS canon as it suits me, in a 'verse where Kate is still alive and working for NCIS.
> 
> NCIS folks: Gill and Cal are experts in lie detection, using facial expression (reading emotion), vocal stress analysis and other expertise. The Lightman Group helps various law enforcement agencies and other people when the truth is at stake.
> 
> LTM folks: Kate and Gibbs are federal agents who work for NCIS, investigating crimes affecting the US Navy or Marines. Kate is ex-Secret Service. Gibbs is a team leader and is reknowned for his gut instincts

* * *

  ** _Subtext and Pheromones_**

* * *

 

"All right?" Cal pokes his head round the door of the conference room they've repurposed into a storage and sorting house for the unusually papery paper trail they've ended up following on this one.

"Be better if we had more hands on deck," says Gibbs, his tone testy. Being stuck doing paperwork is not his style at all, and it shows.

Cal grins. "What can I say? Duty calls." They all know he's thoroughly delighted his skills are required elsewhere.

Kate's kind of grateful it's not strictly NCIS's case - the lack of cyberspace evidence would drive McGee and Abby demented - but at the same time, she's itching to draft a couple more people in to help. The four of them sorting through this many files by hand gives new meaning to the word boring. When Gill and Cal are off being mindreaders and it's down to two? That's a special kind of tedium.

It's been a long day.

"When are you two coming back to help?" Kate feels like she's whining, suspects she sounds like it as well.

Cal puts on a very over the top and clearly fake face of sympathy. "I'm sorry, love, you know I'd help if I could..."

"Liar."

"Well spotted, Miss Todd, I can see I'm rubbing off on you." He smirks. "Give it another decade, then you can do my job and I'll do yours, eh?"

He waggles his eyebrows, and, at a loss for a more mature response, Kate pokes her tongue out.

"That's a bit uncalled for, innit?" The problem with Cal is how he manages to make 'smug and annoying' so damn likeable. It's infuriatingly hard to stay mad at him, a quality he shares with Gibbs.

"No, that was totally called for."

Gibbs cuts in before it can turn into a quarrel (albeit a friendly one). "Did you come to help, Lightman, or just to gloat?"

He can usually get more sense out of Cal than anyone else, but that isn't always saying a lot. Today, it seems, Cal isn't so easily reined in.

"Oh, I came to gloat."

Kate can't help but laugh at his honesty. "Shouldn't you at least be doing your job, instead of standing there stopping us from doing ours?"

Cal nods, shoves his hands in his pockets like he's trying to stop himself waving them about in excitement. Kate's never known anyone who gets quite so much enjoyment out of his own mischief. "Prob'ly. Just fancied a little break." He grins still more widely. "I left Gill with the most boring man on the planet. She is going to kill me when I get back there."

He sounds delighted by the prospect.

"You say that like it's a good thing?"

"Well, it's very entertaining." He shrugs. "Best be off, otherwise she might strangle the bloke with his own tie. Don't have too much fun without me. Ta-ra!" He grins again, waves, and disappears.

Kate shares a smile with Gibbs. "He's hopeless. One of these days Gill's going to tear him a new one."

"She hasn't already?"

"Good point."

Gibbs shrugs a shoulder. "He's just a little kid pulling on pigtails."

She laughs. It's quite an image, and undeniably accurate. "As in negative attention is better than none?"

"Somethin' like that."

"Too bad he won't just admit he's crazy about her."

Gibbs raises his eyebrows, shrugs, nods. It's sort of the open secret at the Lightman Group. Cal is the last person in the building to actually think it's any kind of secret at all _._ The fact Gill feels pretty much the same way wouldn't exactly take a rocket scientist to work out either, even if she and Kate hadn't talked about it at length.

Kate's not said anything to Gibbs, but she'd be more surprised if he hadn't noticed than if he had. She wouldn't even be surprised to learn Cal knows, on some level, that the feeling is mutual. But just like with her and Gibbs, for all sorts of reasons, it's not as simple as it should be.

(Some days it's all she can do not to bash their heads together. They're a right pair. Both of them so entirely convinced they're being noble by not saying anything, and both of them too stubborn to be told otherwise.)

"He's an idiot to leave it so long."  _And so are you, by the way_ , she wants to add, though if Gibbs is as good at subtext as she suspects he is, he'll hear it anyway.

"Maybe he's trying to do the right thing."

Kate resists, just about, the temptation to roll her eyes. They really are as bad as each other, apparently unable to see they're wanted, needed, imperfect as they are. "Do you think he'll tell her? Eventually?" It's sort of a leading question, but her frustration is less easily kept in check of late. Sometimes she badly wants to put Gibbs on the spot and force a straight answer or two out of him. This is... well, it's a start.

There's a long, longpause before he answers. "Should he?"

"Well..." She gulps. She didn't expect him to turn the question back on her.  _Shit_.  _Okay._ So _not how this was meant to go._

Gibbs isn't looking at her, but suddenly there's a charged atmosphere in the room and she wonders if he feels it, too, or if the undercurrent is all in her imagination. There could be so much riding on this conversation.

She swallows again and tells herself not to be such a wimp. "Wouldn't it be better if they both knew where they stood?"

He's still looking down at the papers spread over the desk, but her gut's telling her he's no longer really seeing them. He's the one who taught her to listen to her gut, and right now it's jumping up and down, gesticulating wildly. She holds her breath as she waits for an answer.

"Workplace romance... it's hard, Katie." She wonders if he realises when he calls her that. If he notices it slips out so much more easily when their conversations stray from work topics. If he hears how his voice is suddenly low and confiding. "People end up gettin' hurt."

She's not sure what worries him the most. The possibility of getting hurt, or the idea he might hurt her. She's not even sure what frightens her more, but recently she's realised the idea they might both be in the same boat and end up never trying is even scarier.

If she thought it'd work, she'd cross the room, climb in his lap, and kiss him until she ran out of oxygen. But she has a feeling it would make him pull away. Would, frankly, scare the shit out of him, insofar as anything scares him. She can't bear the thought of losing this partnership - this friendship - because she tried to force his hand and failed. They've grown still closer of late, and if she's going to risk what they have... she needs to do it right. Needs to give them a fighting chance.

"I think sometimes... the hard things are the most worthwhile though, don't you? It doesn't always have to end in disaster."

He chuckles, though it sounds strained and sarcastic more than amused. "Guess it's hard to imagine the happy endin' when what you've mostly seen are train wrecks." He shrugs again. "Maybe they're just tryna keep ahold of what they've got. Maybe sometimes that's enough. Has to be enough."

Her heart rapidly sinks down to her boots, and doesn't stop when it reaches the floor. She wants so badly to believe they can make this work, but if Gibbs is this convinced it's impossible...

"But it could work. It could be good. It could be great." Even to herself, she sounds like she's pleading with him. And maybe she is. "Wouldn't you want to try? Isn't their friendship a really, really good place to start?"

She's suddenly desperate for him to at least admit it's a possibility. To give her a little hope. She fears she's leaving herself exposed, but she's not sure she cares any more. Maybe it's time.

Gill keeps insisting he wants her, and it's not as if she hasn't suspected for a long time that he might, but it's not the same as hearing him say it, even in a roundabout, not-really-saying-it kind of way. She just needs...

He shrugs again, frowns deeply. It makes him look old, old and tired and sad. There's a long moment of silence before he speaks again. "I don't wanna... I mean... he's prob'ly scared he's gonna hurt her. Hurt her bad and lose her and have nothin' left. Lose the best thing in his life." His voice is quiet, grave. "It's a lot to gamble. To lose everythin'." He stops for a second. "I mean, not everythin'. He'd still have Emily..."

There's an ache in his voice, a crack he can't hide. Kate has watched, with both delight and a haunting sadness, how Emily latched on to Gibbs, how she treats him like a favourite (not to mention supercool and totally badass) uncle. Kate doesn't need telling out loud to know it's a source of pain and joy alike for him.

If Cal and Gill crashed and burned, Cal wouldn't be alone. He wouldn't bury himself in work because he had nothing else left. Gill might be one of the best things in Cal's life, but she's not everything.

Gibbs knows what it's like to lose... everything.

And his qualification makes Kate wonder if he's admitting more about himself than he realises or intends. More about his own fear of losing 'the best thing in his life'. Could he really mean her?

She wants to tell him he can't lose her. That even at his worst, his most difficult and trying and annoying and outright infuriating, she still loves him, despite herself, despite her better judgement. Despite trying really, really hard not to.

If it's what he's saying, of course, if that's what he's so afraid of, and she's not nearly certain she means quite that much to him.

He flips a page over, as if he's finished reading it, but she's as sure as she can be he's not taking in any more than she is. She wants so badly to reach out, reach him somehow. She takes a deep breath and hopes it'll stop her voice from shaking.

"Don't you think, sometimes, maybe it's worth the risk?"

He glances up at her sharply, and in the dimly lit office his blue eyes seem suddenly to be glowing. He studies her for what feels like a very long time. "Maybe," he allows, eventually. "Maybe sometimes."

His voice is rough, catching at her heart, but besides the way his eyes are searching hers intently, there's nothing on his face she can actually fathom. Whether he knows what she's asking, what exactly he's seeing as he looks at her... whether she's just reading way too much into this whole conversation. She has no idea.

She swallows hard and takes a deep breath. "And you know, if they really care..." She does her best to smile encouragingly. "Even when you mess up, if someone truly cares about you, they won't let it be the end of everything. You know?"

He's so wounded by life, but he still has such a big heart. She doesn't know if being scared to hurt someone is the stumbling block he can't get over, but she can do her best to tell him she cares enough she'd take the risk, take the hit, and wouldn't run away if it didn't pan out.

For another long moment, he looks at her, then smiles briefly, shakes his head, and looks down. She wishes she had even a quarter of the expertise Cal or Gill has of reading faces. She's known Gibbs for years, but she still has no confidence in her ability to guess what he's thinking.

Or maybe it's not so much a lack of experience, but just being scared to trust her own instincts.

Maybe she needs to be brave. To make it happen. Maybe she needs to listen to her own arguments and take the first step herself somehow. Do something to convince him to act, something that'll make him reach out and pull her closer, not make him push her away.

Gibbs' attention is back on the paper in his hand, properly back on it, and she doesn't know if it's a way of deflecting more questions, or of dismissing the whole subject as unimportant.

He's so damn frustrating and confusing, and she's crazy to care about him so much, crazy to want him like she does. But she does, and until she has some clear idea whether or not he's willing to risk trying for more, she's probably not going to get a moment's peace. It's all coming to a head, and she can no longer take it lying down.

She needs space, she needs to think, she probably needs a damn good cry. She's not going to get any of those things here.

With a suddenness that even surprises her, and makes Gibbs blink up at her with a wary expression, she stands up, knocking her chair over in the process.  _Great, Kate, way to go_. She avoids his gaze, rights the chair, and grabs a box of files. "I - I'm going to work on these at home," she stutters, then turns on her heel and walks out before he can respond or she can say something she'll regret.

She doesn't look back, doesn't stop until she's at her car, and only then does she realise she has tears running down her face. She shakes her head as she dumps the box on the passenger seat and climbs in behind the wheel, wipes at her face, and takes a few deep breaths.

Home. A hot bath. Maybe an early night.

Reading work files in bed is not exactly a relaxing evening, but she's sure it'll be more relaxing than drowning in pheromones in a room with a man who won't admit he wants her. In the circumstances, she's inclined to see it as her least bad option.  _Beggars can't be choosers, Kate_. The rest of it can go jump until the morning.

_~ fin ~_


End file.
